Kenneth Turan

Director Peter Nicks got more than he bargained for when he started working on "The Force," a lot more, and we are the beneficiaries.

Winner of a directing award at Sundance, this examination of the internal workings of the Oakland Police Department is the second of a projected trilogy of documentaries looking at that Northern California city's public institutions.

Nicks' first film, 2012's "The Waiting Room," was set in Oakland's Highland Hospital and won the Truer Than Fiction prize at the Independent Spirit Awards.

"The Force" takes us inside not a building but an organization, and a particularly fraught one at that. With remarkable...

Related "Kenneth Turan" Articles

Director Peter Nicks got more than he bargained for when he started working on "The Force," a lot more, and we are the beneficiaries.
Winner of a directing award at Sundance, this examination of the internal workings of the Oakland Police Department is...

Only one bank faced criminal charges in the aftermath of 2008’s global financial meltdown, and it wasn’t one you might expect.
If behemoths like Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley were judged too big to fail, then tiny community-oriented Abacus Federal...

A parade of American presidents, from Eisenhower on, all warning of the inherent peril of runaway spending. A Saturday Night Live skit. A graphic presenting America's budgetary history as a roller-coaster ride of epic proportions. An out-of-control screed...

CANNES, FRANCE -- If you believe the tabloid press, or even if you don't, Angelina Jolie hasn't lacked for experiences in her life. However, her relationship with Mariane Pearl, widow of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, brought her in...

Rocket Science, an unconventional coming-of-age yarn that the Johns Hopkins University grad Jeffrey Blitz filmed in Baltimore two summers ago, will premiere at this year's Sundance Film Festival, which kicks off today in Park City, Utah."I'd be lying if I...

WASHINGTON -- Fate is indeed fickle. Who would have guessed that in this year's Oscar voting, Brokeback Mountain, a fine risky movie about a gay love affair, would surge ahead of Capote, a movie about a gay celebrity journalist, only to be edged out for...

I FINALLY FINISHED the script for the sequel to the movie "Titanic." I am calling it -- and let the legal record show that I thought of this first -- "Titanic II: The Sequel."I am darned proud of this script. I have been working on it, without sleeping or...

Is everything old really new again?That's the way it seems with movie theaters, where the trend favors huge, multiscreen complexes reminiscent of the movie palaces of old, those spacious, elaborate, ornate theaters that were as distinctive as the movies...

To live in America today is to occasionally imagine shooting someone.I don't mean that you would do it. Of course you would not.Your morality or decency or fear of getting caught would stop you.I just mean you have imagined it.You have imagined it when...

THERE'S A SCENE IN THE NEW MOVIE "Thelma & Louise" where Thelma, played by Geena Davis, holds a cocked gun to the head of a state trooper and says: "You be sweet to your wife. My husband wasn't sweet to me and look how I turned out."So, you're probably...

The Oscars are here! Finally!
Next Winter Olympics, can the academy move the ceremony a week earlier rather than a week later? (Asking for a friend.)
With this year’s best picture race being such a wide-open free-for-all, I’ve gone back and forth on...

In an early scene in the movie “Darkest Hour,” Winston Churchill’s family gathers to toast him for his recent appointment as Britain’s prime minister.
The camera briefly captures Churchill’s five children, including his youngest daughter, Mary, who grew...

"Wind River," written and directed by Taylor Sheridan and starring Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen, is something special.
At times poetic, at others bleak and brutal — and how could it be otherwise, with rape and murder at the heart of its plot —...

I always thought I would see Anna again. We hadn't been in touch for years, but our collaboration had been so intense that not connecting again was inconceivable. Now it's never going to happen.
Anna, known professionally as Patty Duke, died with...

Previous Alejandro G. Inarritu films such as "21 Grams," "Babel" and the Oscar-winning "Birdman" have not lacked for pretension and self-importance, so it comes as something of a pleasant surprise, possibly even to the director himself, that what he's...

One of the virtues of a movie such as "Straight Outta Compton" is that it deals with a past not too far gone. Films that try too hard to capture the current moment can feel forced (see under: Middle East action dramas circa the mid-2000s), while movies...

Hello! I'm Mark Olsen, and welcome to this week’s Indie Focus newsletter.
Think of this as your field guide to a world of Only Good Movies, spotlighting what’s going on in the world of cinema both in Los...

Disney's "Tomorrowland" is leading a slower-than-expected Memorial Day weekend at the box office with a studio-estimated $40.7 million four-day haul projected for the U.S. and Canada, lower than initial estimates that went as high as $50 million.
The...

Director Jacques Audiard's film "Dheepan," a drama about three Tamil exiles trying to reconstruct their lives in France, has won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
"These people are running away from a tragedy," Audiard told L.A. Times film...